Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday August 24, 2012 @02:54PM
from the coordinates-undefined dept.

New submitter wermske writes "Ars Technica and ZDNet report the Location Privacy Act of 2012 (SB-1434) was passed by the California legislatureon Wednesday. The California Location Privacy Act, co-sponsored by the ACLU of California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, updates California privacy law to reflect the modern mobile world by providing needed protection against warrantless government access to a person's location information. Recent reports indicate that cell phone tracking is routine and few agencies obtain warrants for such surveillance. The need for this protection resurfaced last week when warrantless GPS tracking appeared again in the national news — a federal appeals court ruled that law enforcement is allowed to track the GPS signal coming from a suspect's prepaid phone without a warrant. The scope of the Location Privacy Act would include gathering GPS or other location-tracking data from cell phones, tablets, computers, automobiles, etc. The next stop is the governor's desk; however, there is concern that Governor Jerry Brown may not sign this act into law. In 2011, Gov. Brown vetoed an attempt at enforcing stricter privacy rules."

This could be clarified very easy by reading the Tenth Amendment. And since the 10th was ratified AFTER the actual 1786 constitution, it supercedes anything that was written at that time. Powers not given to Congress are reserved to the Member States of the Union.

The 10th says that Congress does not have the power to ban a substance inside a state. Therefore California can legalize marijuana. Or Pennsylvania can legalize natural milk. Or ____ can legalize automatic weapons. Only when you cross state lines can you be arrested (see the case of the Amish farmer who was arrested because he sold milk to non-residents, but is still allowed to sell to PA residents).

Back to topic: If California's government wants to ban themselves from taking cellphone or ISP records of conversations without a warrant, they can. That won't stop the federals though if your conversation crosses the CA line.